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There’s been a lot of noise made lately about just when are we finally going to get a female-led superhero movie, specifically from Marvel Studios. Recently while doing press for Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel chief Kevin Feige said, “I hope we do it sooner rather than later.” If you “hope” t to do it, then just do it…you just made a movie featuring a talking raccoon and a talking tree; people will accept a human woman as a lead in a superhero movie if it’s done well. And please people, stop citing poorly made flops from a decade ago as reasons not to make a superhero movie with a woman in the lead. I mean, Scarlett Johansson’s Lucy wasn’t even reviewed that well, and it still opened better than competing male-led action movie Hercules. Imagine if it was Black Widow and sporting a Marvel Studios logo how well it would have done?

But according to this story in The Hollywood Reporter, it appears the first female-led Marvel film won’t be coming from Marvel Studios proper, but from Sony, who owns the rights to the characters in the Spider-Man universe. Writer Lisa Joy (Westworld) has been hired to work on the script for the female-centered story, and according to Deadline, Sony is looking to have the movie out by 2017. While there are rumors of a Wonder Woman spin-off or maybe even a Marvel Studios female-led film hitting theaters by that time, nothing has been confirmed at all, so it seems that the first major superhero movie with a woman in the lead since 2005’s Elektra will probably be from Sony.

So, now comes the fun part. Who the heck could it be? The Deadline reports suggests “several strong possibilities — Silver Sable, Black Cat, Stunner, Firestarter and Spider-Woman, to name a few.” Actually, that list pretty much covers all the possibilities in the Spider-Man world for female heroes (I think by “Firestarter” they mean “Firestar” and Stunner is more of a villain, and D-list villain at that.) Honestly, I think we can narrow it down to Black Cat, Silver Sable, and Spider-Woman. Black Cat is way too similar to Catwoman, one of the most notorious female led superhero flops in recent memory. Silver Sable is a possibility, but might come across too much like Marvel Studios’ Black Widow. The smart money is on Spider-Woman: she has cool powers, a striking and memorable look (that isn’t just a woman wearing a famous male hero’s outfit), and has name recognition simply by having the word “Spider” as part of her name. Sony might have to remove the Nick Fury/S.H.I.E.L.D aspects of her origin, but the broad strokes could stay the same.

So what do you guys out there think? Who should be the first female superhero from the Marvel Universe to get her own movie? Let us know in the comments below.

I’m fairly certain that Spider-Woman isn’t actually a Spider-Man universe character? Stan Lee introduced her in order to get a lock on the trademark to the name, so that DC or somebody else wouldn’t steal it out from under them, but outside of normal Marvel cross-overs and her appearance in the Ultimate Universe, Spider-Woman doesn’t actually have anything to do with Spider-Man. So…Silver Sable it is.
I’m sure Fox knows this, as even their computers have access to wikipedia.